Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday November 02, 2012 @11:11AM
from the neither-rain-nor-sleet-nor-$30-adapter dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Hurricane Sandy may have plunged part of New York City into darkness, drowned its basements and subway tunnels in saltwater, and even set part of a neighborhood on fire, but it couldn't stop New Yorkers from standing in line for hours to purchase the iPad Mini. Hundreds of people lined up in front of Apple's Fifth Avenue store for the chance to get their hands on the 7.9-inch device. According to CNET, which was on the scene and running a live-blog ahead of the store's 10 AM EST opening, 'many people in line are not fluent in English and are either Asian immigrants or visitors.' That opening was originally supposed to take place at 8 AM, and likely delayed because of the obvious citywide transportation issues. But for those in New York City who manage to get their sweaty hands on a new iPad Mini, there's an unusual wrinkle in the situation: power is still out below 39th Street in Manhattan, as well as portions of Brooklyn and Queens. (Apple's Fifth Avenue store is well above that power line.) While some private homes and businesses in electrified areas have set out power strips for strangers to charge their phones, it's hard to imagine a crowd of New Yorkers standing idly by while someone spends a significant amount of time charging a new tablet. Fortunately, many of those without power have found refuge with friends and family, if they haven't left the city altogether."

Yeah, even the Apple rumor sites are reporting shorter lines [macrumors.com]. Which is to be expected, since the iPhone is much more popular than the iPad in terms of sales and there wasn't as much pent-up demand as what you'd see when you've waited a year to release a new product, but even so, I'm guessing it's less than what Apple was anticipating. It remains to be seen, however, just how this will reflect on total sales through the holiday season. It may very well be a little foreshadowing in the story.

Which is to be expected, since the iPhone is much more popular than the iPad in terms of sales and there wasn't as much pent-up demand as what you'd see when you've waited a year to release a new product

Also the only models that are available on launch day are the Wi-Fi only models. Everybody who wants a cellular model is waiting until late November.

This may be a bit off topic, but I really don't understand why someone would want cell service on a tablet. How often do people use tablets when they have neither wifi access nor a phone they can tether to? It seems a very limited use case to justify the expense.

I must be missing something since they seem to be relatively popular.

Back on-topic

The biggest reason I think enthusiasm is limited on the iPad mini is the lack of a high resolution display. They needed to price it comparably to the other 7" range

Well, i got a full sized tablet, and don't have a phone to tether it to, though I did get a mobile hotspot for it (found one that i can have a plan as low as free for 500mb, up to around 70 for 10gb a month i think it was and quite a few in between)

I pay $15/month for 250MB on my iPad. I bought the 3G original iPad not so much because it's "3G", but because it's "GPS", which I use often. I'm out and about quite a lot with it, and I also use the data plan regularly. It's not enough data for streaming Netflix for my kids, but I check email, weather, download a book, or whatever with it.

If I want to tether the iPad to my iPhone, I can, but I have to set it up each time. When I just want to use the iPad for a minute, $15/month is something I've bee

How often do people use tablets when they have neither wifi access nor a phone they can tether to?

A lot of the time. Most countries aren't like the USA, free Wi-Fi is difficult to find. In addition, data tethering with your phone may be limited depending on which plan you have, and even if it's available, it's inconvenient and battery draining.

Even Apple can't get away with charging a premium with a substandard display.

Since when is the display "substandard"? "Not Retina" is not the same thin

Okay... maybe the resolution isn't completely substandard, but it is certainly below average [wikipedia.org] and carries the highest price tag of any of the sanely priced wifi-only models (I have no idea what Toshiba was thinking trying to get $500 for the Excite 7.7).

As far as the need for cell service on a tablet, I can now see the value a bit more clearly from your post as well as others. It still seems like it would be more expensive, but I could see where the convenience may be worth it.

I always love how some people, regardless of which side they are on, will refuse to acknowledge facts and will read into things to find stuff that isn't there.

For instance, contrary to what you believe, I'm a dyed-in-wool Apple fanboy. I've had a Mac as my primary machine since the late '80s, and even typed this comment up on my Mac Mini. I have a late-model PowerBook G4 that sees regular use on my desk, plus a Titanium PowerBook G4 that still works fine in the closet. My phone is an iPhone 4, my tablet is

I doubt they cared about power. The summary says they're mostly immigrants and such, it's a very common tactic by scalpers to pay immigrants and such to stand in line and buy the early stock so they can then resell it for a premium. No idea how they keep the immigrants loyal enough to actually buy the thing and bring it over instead of running off with either the money or the device but it seems to work.

Actually I got an email from BestBuy begging me to come wait in line at the local stores, too. I personally hate best buy, but there really is no where else to go around here (so I am a reward zone member). When I saw the email I thought "This must be for something next week..." not even realizing that its November already.

... posts subjective, pro-brand nonsense as AC, presumably because either A) they care entirely too much about the karma score of their named account, or B) they're too chickenshit to create a named account and thus collect all the bad will they've earned themselves.

While some private homes and businesses in electrified areas have set out power strips for strangers to charge their phones, it's hard to imagine a crowd of New Yorkers standing idly by while someone spends a significant amount of time charging a new tablet.

Batteries drain in storage, and I believe are usually shipped at 50% charge due to other issues with the stability of the batteries under shipping conditions.

Although since the Apple store has power, they could take half of them out and pre-charge them to 100% and give the buyers a choice. Or the buyer could probably charge in the store.

Actually, Apple's products don't tend to sit on shelves - from manufacture to the time it's sold, it'll probably be around a week, and most of it has been just waiting for the pallet to fill up, waiting for the shipper it pick it up, shipping it from China to the warehouse in the US, then distributing it out from there.

If you go by date codes, the whole process can easily be as little as 4 days (same week) to basically "last week". Since iPads and iPhones don't normally linger on shelves too long, Apple charges them up all the way so the user can use it immediately.

The 40% charge is a shipment charge for products that move slower as it's been empirically determined that it ages the batteries the slowest.

It's actually sort of unusual to find an Apple product out of the box that doesn't have 95+% charge. They just don't sit on shelves that long.

>> While some private homes and businesses in electrified areas have set out power strips for strangers to charge their phones, it's hard to imagine a crowd of New Yorkers standing idly by while someone sp

The article is focused on power and transportation - we're heading for 100 dead as a result of Sandy. The plurality of those deaths occurred in New York City. Last night they added a few more dead to the list, including a pair of toddlers that were pulled away from their mother by a sudden wave -- while she was trying to run down the street fleeing her burning home. That one is haunting me.

You know, if Armageddon or the Zombie Apocalypse come to be, Americans are so very screwed.

[cue video of slightly overweight and under-fit dude puffing and running from a shambling zombie hoard]He's just about to escape when he passes by a dessicated corpse with an iPad clutched in its hands."oooo" iPad miniAs he reaches for the mini, the corpse reaches up and grabs his arm, holding him in place as the shamblers catch up and have a nice meaty snack.

Looking at the specs of the iPad Mini: crappy dual-core CPU, crappy screen, 0.5 GB RAM, glued battery etc. and the fact that it's basically the iPad 2 shrunk, I came to the conclusion that this is a product on which Apple spent nearly 0 engineering and it is made from super-cheap components. In other words, at US$ 330 for the cheapest model and a whopping US$ 530 for the 32 GB model, Apple is going to make a fucking profit genocide! This goes beyond printing money, this is like stealing candy from toddlers, except the candy is made from platinum.

From a purely profit POV, this might very well be Apple's most successful product, ever.

From a purely profit POV, this might very well be Apple's most successful product, ever.

Only if the lame specs don't kill the Christmas market. Granted, this will likely be the most successful Apple product ever at driving away customers after they compare their new overpriced toy to the Nexus tablet everybody else got and learn the truth.

By the way, do you like to post fallacies intentionally or do you just not understand logic? "20% of of iPhone users are almost always overdrawn" does not imply that "~80% of iPhone users' bank accounts are usually in the black".

many people in line are not fluent in English and are either Asian immigrants or visitors.'

Are we getting a start on next weeks complaints from the Tea Party vote suppression brigade? 'Oh, theres a bus of voters that aren't the same color as us.' 'Oh theres a bus of votes who don't speak english.' I bet when the bus of voters from the church comes, and their minister tells them vote for the anti-christ or go to hell, the tea party people aren't going to be complaining. I understand that this st

Are we getting a start on next weeks complaints from the Tea Party vote suppression brigade? 'Oh, theres a bus of voters that aren't the same color as us.' 'Oh theres a bus of votes who don't speak english.' I bet when the bus of voters from the church comes, and their minister tells them vote for the anti-christ or go to hell, the tea party people aren't going to be complaining. I understand that this statement was put in to make people believe that no one except scalpers are buying the iPad, but that is simply not true no matter how much one wants it to be true. Facts are not based on personal beliefs. I am sure if you went into any major shop many of the people purchasing would be visitors. That is what NYC run.

Did you read the article? No of course not, how naive of me. That was the point of the comment in the article. They even interviewed some of them to show that, for example, two of the purchaers were a father and son from Brazil.

Hate to get in the way of a good Apple-bashing but I wanted to say two things.

> it's hard to imagine a crowd of New Yorkers standing idly by while> someone spends a significant amount of time charging a new tablet.

They come from the factory fully charged, or close to.

And, unrelated to the story in particular, mine arrived this morning and I'm very happy with it so far. Ever since tablets were first on the horizon (post-iPhone and Kindle but pre-everything else) I always wanted one the size of a paperback. When the iPad came out, I thought it was too big. Tried it, didn't care for it much. I bought one to do a bit of testing and development on and figured I'd see if I grew to like it. I didn't, and sold it a few months later. (I bought a refurbished iPad 1 shortly after the 2 came out, so it was cheap, and I sold it for not much of a loss -- basically I rented it for like $8 a month which wasn't bad since it was for work.)

I ordered the Mini as soon as I could and it arrived this morning and it's great. It's a great size and very light. The screen, while not retina, is still good -- we were all happy with our old iPhones before the 4 came along, right?:-)

It's not for everyone but for a lot of people it will be very appealing.

Still trying to figure out what the market is.
Small and more mobile you have a iphone or ipod.
Larger and more functional you have the regular sized ipad.
Exactly what niche (or is that the point) is this serving?

EDT is 4 hours behind of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)
Note that EDT is a daylight saving time/summer time zone. It is generally only used during the summer in the places listed below, during the winter EST is used instead.

IIRC EST is eastern standard time. We are cyrrently still on daylight savings time (EDT). I like to think of it as "dumb time" is standard time, and "smart time" is daylight savings time. Though dumb time is nice for the 4 or so months we still use it otherwise the sun is completely down before 5:00 pm.

Out of the bad comes good. In Long Island, people for the most part are being helpful and nicer. Chainsawing fallen trees for neighbors unasked. Helping with cleanups, pushing cars that ran out of gas while waiting on the gas lines that are now the norm. Helping in all sorts of ways, putting power strips on generators so people can charge their devices, sharing water/food...

This is happening in all the affected states. Considering all the damage done by Sandy, it's great to see how people are pulling

Indeed, many places in Manhattan don't need volunteers. Most people don't have cars to deal with, or yards/trees in need of cutting. The biggest problems are the areas without electricity and the fuel shortage, neither of which are things individuals can do much about.

Individuals can't haul fuel and generators, can't get ahold of the Red Cross and see what needs to be done?

To quote the folksy wisdom of my hillbilly father, "Can't" is a lazy bastard, who never accomplished a damn thing.